Sadly, they are not always progressive and allow fear to direct decisions.
PIC S3 Ships & Tech
- Thread starter NCC-73515
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Let's pick apart Jorg HIllebrand's exhaustive picking apart of the Fleet Formation in 310, which was apparently the same before and after being taken over by the youth of tomorrow:
- 339 ships - that alone is the record for Starfleet ships seen at one time on screen. I think the last record was set with the ~70 I remember counting in the big fleet at the end of DS9 "A Call To Arms", not counting ~25 Klingon ships. The big fleet scenes in "Sacrifice of Angels" were dozens of Starfleet ships in any given wide shot, but definitely not hundreds.
- And of course this is only around half of the ~600 Federation ships that made up the Operation Return fleet in "Angels", though we didn't see all of THAT on screen at once either.
- Seven of the eleven sub-formations in this fleet are centered on an Odyssey-class ship, either alone or as part of a "core" of four ships that include two Sagans and a Luna. The other four are centered on Akiras. Odyssey wings, anyone? Or Akira wings?
- No Ross-class starships have any prominent place here - not surprising since they're bashful about their missing nacelle components. Also there are no Sutherland-class ships. These two are generally viewed as the evolutionary successors to the Galaxy and Nebula classes, so why aren't they there or at the center of any formations? Low polys?
- No Duderstadt-class ships either.
- The most common ship design present is the Sovereign, with 38 of them present. This goes towards my long-standing presumption that unlike the Galaxy-class, which was the Big Shiny Thing of Starfleet of that era and which was never supposed to be a common sight, the Sovereign was a functional replacement for the workhorse role that the Excelsior used to have in the TNG era.
- Right after that, there are 36 Luna-class ships here. Back in the Titan novels, the Luna's initial production run was for twelve examples, but after another Borg incident the then-President confirmed they would build more. Either way it's a good confirmation that the design was successful.
- 36 Pathfinders as well - and there are no more than 24 of any other ship class present.
- The relative size of the ships does tend to go down the further you go away from the center of a fleet element or the whole formation. Except for the central element, the tops and sides of the overall fleet are bordered by Reliant, Nova, and Defiant class ships.
- That central element has bigger / newer ships overall, centered on an Odyssey (the Enterprise-F), and flanked by Sovereigns, Sagans, Echelons and eventually the Titan.
- How much sense does this make? Some. The closest comparisons we can draw in real life are WWII battleship formations - they center on one or more battleships (which have the largest guns), arranged in a line with their weapons facing broadside to the enemy formation. Smaller ships are deployed around the battleships to screen for their opposite number (who would otherwise be able to get close enough to the battleships to take them out) and for submarines.
[Modern aircraft carrier task forces replace a battleship with a carrier, and the surrounding ships are there to ward off submarines or other aircraft instead of other capital warships, but I digress.]
- You COULD surmise that the fleet formations in this episode DO have a line of bigger ships arranged in vertical lines, since broadsides aren't a thing here, with the smaller starships could screen out other ones from getting closer along the plane of the starships' overall arrangements (and indeed, that's how the Titan approached the fleet on her strafing runs). You wouldn't want to approach from the front or rear due to the overlapping phaser and torpedo arcs, so in THAT sense, when this formation is largely arranged to attack a single stationary target, this formation has SOME merit to it. The fleet overall can sort of "envelop" spacedock if or when it needed to get closer, with the elements arcing above and below the station to reduce range without breaking formation.
- Of course this makes little difference since Starfleet weapons are supposed to have ranges of thousands of kilometers, and all the fighting was done within hundreds. Because Hollywood (and despite "The Expanse" series having already shown how you can do exciting space battles in BVR distances).
- The fleet formation was assembled before the takeover. The fleet however does not break formation after spacedock falls, simply rotating to face the Earth (a bit of a cheat, as all the formation was already facing Earth in the same orientation as they were facing the station, but rotated to face the planet anyway) and by the end of it the remaining ships are arranged in a pretty generic clump of ships with less integrity.
Mark
- 339 ships - that alone is the record for Starfleet ships seen at one time on screen. I think the last record was set with the ~70 I remember counting in the big fleet at the end of DS9 "A Call To Arms", not counting ~25 Klingon ships. The big fleet scenes in "Sacrifice of Angels" were dozens of Starfleet ships in any given wide shot, but definitely not hundreds.
- And of course this is only around half of the ~600 Federation ships that made up the Operation Return fleet in "Angels", though we didn't see all of THAT on screen at once either.
- Seven of the eleven sub-formations in this fleet are centered on an Odyssey-class ship, either alone or as part of a "core" of four ships that include two Sagans and a Luna. The other four are centered on Akiras. Odyssey wings, anyone? Or Akira wings?
- No Ross-class starships have any prominent place here - not surprising since they're bashful about their missing nacelle components. Also there are no Sutherland-class ships. These two are generally viewed as the evolutionary successors to the Galaxy and Nebula classes, so why aren't they there or at the center of any formations? Low polys?
- No Duderstadt-class ships either.
- The most common ship design present is the Sovereign, with 38 of them present. This goes towards my long-standing presumption that unlike the Galaxy-class, which was the Big Shiny Thing of Starfleet of that era and which was never supposed to be a common sight, the Sovereign was a functional replacement for the workhorse role that the Excelsior used to have in the TNG era.
- Right after that, there are 36 Luna-class ships here. Back in the Titan novels, the Luna's initial production run was for twelve examples, but after another Borg incident the then-President confirmed they would build more. Either way it's a good confirmation that the design was successful.
- 36 Pathfinders as well - and there are no more than 24 of any other ship class present.
- The relative size of the ships does tend to go down the further you go away from the center of a fleet element or the whole formation. Except for the central element, the tops and sides of the overall fleet are bordered by Reliant, Nova, and Defiant class ships.
- That central element has bigger / newer ships overall, centered on an Odyssey (the Enterprise-F), and flanked by Sovereigns, Sagans, Echelons and eventually the Titan.
- How much sense does this make? Some. The closest comparisons we can draw in real life are WWII battleship formations - they center on one or more battleships (which have the largest guns), arranged in a line with their weapons facing broadside to the enemy formation. Smaller ships are deployed around the battleships to screen for their opposite number (who would otherwise be able to get close enough to the battleships to take them out) and for submarines.
[Modern aircraft carrier task forces replace a battleship with a carrier, and the surrounding ships are there to ward off submarines or other aircraft instead of other capital warships, but I digress.]
- You COULD surmise that the fleet formations in this episode DO have a line of bigger ships arranged in vertical lines, since broadsides aren't a thing here, with the smaller starships could screen out other ones from getting closer along the plane of the starships' overall arrangements (and indeed, that's how the Titan approached the fleet on her strafing runs). You wouldn't want to approach from the front or rear due to the overlapping phaser and torpedo arcs, so in THAT sense, when this formation is largely arranged to attack a single stationary target, this formation has SOME merit to it. The fleet overall can sort of "envelop" spacedock if or when it needed to get closer, with the elements arcing above and below the station to reduce range without breaking formation.
- Of course this makes little difference since Starfleet weapons are supposed to have ranges of thousands of kilometers, and all the fighting was done within hundreds. Because Hollywood (and despite "The Expanse" series having already shown how you can do exciting space battles in BVR distances).
- The fleet formation was assembled before the takeover. The fleet however does not break formation after spacedock falls, simply rotating to face the Earth (a bit of a cheat, as all the formation was already facing Earth in the same orientation as they were facing the station, but rotated to face the planet anyway) and by the end of it the remaining ships are arranged in a pretty generic clump of ships with less integrity.
Mark
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Just marking that per the "Mission Log" podcast this week, the Titan dining room was in fact a repurposed room from La Sirena, possibly her crew quarters. I'd been wondering about that as the dining room was not the same shape as the Titan's sickbay or crew quarters sets, and wasn't otherwise seen that season (that I could see).
Mark
Mark
In a wet navy, guns and missiles are fired over screening ships whereas in space, phasers are line-of-sight and torpedoes seem to be left for close-range work in modern Trek. So a vertical formation makes more sense in space than a horizontal one if the fleet is doing an offensive action as that gives all the ships a clear line-of-sight to the enemy. A horizontal or spherical one with smaller ships to screen is good for some defense but also prevents the strongest ships in the core from having clear firing lines to the enemy ships, IMHO.
I wonder if Starfleet would spend the next eight or so years refitting and fixing the issues with the Enterprise-F and somehow relaunch it come 2409 or so. Would it still be the F? Would it be the H? Would they retire the Enterprise-G, or revert it's name to the Titan? Assuming Captain Seven and the ship are still functional.
So did I. It would have made more sense than renaming the Titan-A the Enterprise-G, IMO, but Matalas wanted the new hero ship to echo the Constitution-class, aooooo...
That's likely the very in-universe reason why she was retired so early. Starfleet didn't want to spend years and years trying to fix the ship. The resources (including manpower) could be used for several other smaller vessels.
Geordi will probably spend the next few decades fixing her up back to default status again =D.
Including the extensive repairs necessary for the Enterprise-G I suppose... given the murky refit/rebuild/spare parts origins of the Titan-A herself it would at least be fitting.
There was a screen in Episode 1 mentioning her early retirement, and in the audio log released a couple weeks before the series started.
There was at least one in the background visible in the fleet shots prior to the whole Fleet Formation thing (the Steamrunner(s) may have been visible then too). In Jorg's big fleet posittion graphic, the Novas are at the "bottom" of a couple the sub-formations.
In both cases they were re-uses of the assets first seen as the "Badmiral"-named ships in last season's Evil Alt-Universe. I wonder if it'd have been as much of an Easter egg if they'd used STO ships instead back then, as both seasons were produced back-to back and they had these appearances in mind at about the same time. As it stands, no Novas or Steamrunners were in the coalition fleet at the end of S2, which may have been deliberate?
Mark
In both cases they were re-uses of the assets first seen as the "Badmiral"-named ships in last season's Evil Alt-Universe. I wonder if it'd have been as much of an Easter egg if they'd used STO ships instead back then, as both seasons were produced back-to back and they had these appearances in mind at about the same time. As it stands, no Novas or Steamrunners were in the coalition fleet at the end of S2, which may have been deliberate?
Mark
Oh, OK.
From her appearance on Frontier Day, I thought they were unveiling their newest flagship.
dJE
From what I've read/ seen, Except for a few hero vessels all the other ships were STO ships models that were used.
The Nova and Steamrunner were assets from Eaglemoss.
That’s because the display showing the F’s decommissioning was unclear and a blink-and-you’ll miss-it scene. It’s not like they even bothered to make that clear in dialogue or even bothered to make clear what happened to it after the battle. Anyone not on this website or knowledgeable about any background material would have assumed exactly as you did.
Fun fact, the Nova model Eaglemoss gave them is the original CG model from voyager, just in a modern model format.
Anyone else sad no Prometheus class in the formations?
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